6/22/2023 0 Comments End of my addictionWe now understand that changes in brain networks needed for self-regulation cause substance use to become compulsive in some individuals - despite their best efforts to decrease or stop use. Science has shed much light on addiction. The direct and indirect health effects of drug and alcohol addiction are so numerous and devastating that they are considered root causes of the declining life expectancy in our country. Additionally, untreated substance use exacerbates many other health conditions or interferes with their treatment. If you have not lost a family member or friend to drug or alcohol addiction or its consequences, which include diseases like cancer, you likely know someone whose family has suffered such a loss. Last year alone, more than 96,000 people in the United States died from overdoses - usually from opioids but also increasingly from stimulants - and the pandemic worsened an already dire public health crisis. In fact, stigma remains one of the biggest obstacles to confronting America’s current drug crisis. Unfortunately, many in the medical profession harbor this mindset. As a society, we still keep addiction in the shadows, regarding it as something shameful, reflecting lack of character, weakness of will, or even conscious wrongdoing, not a medical issue warranting compassionate medical care. Things have not changed much since that day. Yet, for her, the stigma of addiction and suicide was more powerful than the scientific understanding I was trying to bring to medicine. Of all people, I was someone she should have been able to speak to openly about why and how her father died. She had seen me speak about addiction as a disease of the brain and not a character defect. My mother knew that I had devoted my life to understanding the neurobiological effects of chronic substance use. Overwhelmed by this revelation, I asked my mother, “Why didn’t you tell me until now?” Her response was that she did not want me to lose respect for him or love him less.Īs a society, we still keep addiction in the shadows, regarding it as something shameful, reflecting lack of character, weakness of will, or even conscious wrongdoing, not a medical issue. Unable to stop drinking, he had taken his own life in a final moment of futility and shame. It was only decades later, when I had already been an addiction researcher for several years and my mother was herself dying, that she revealed the truth: My grandfather had had an alcohol addiction. My sisters and I were led to believe that our grandfather had died of a heart attack. The memory of my inability to relieve my mother’s suffering still haunts me. In her grief, she locked herself in her room and would not let me console her. When I was six years old, as I was having dinner with my mother and three sisters, my mother received a telegram. National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora Volkow, MD, presenting her annual report to a meeting of principal investigators in the Clinical Trials Network in Rockville, Maryland.Įditor's note: The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the AAMC or its members.
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